


What Makes the Man

by FlatlandDan



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-11
Updated: 2012-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-30 22:57:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlatlandDan/pseuds/FlatlandDan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end, Clint just burrows against him one movie night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Makes the Man

In the end, Clint just burrows against him one movie night. 

He’s already taking up well over his designated half of the couch, but stretches his whole body so that his sock covered toes barely reached touched his end and Bruce finds the whole image in from of him endearing.  Clint’s wearing the uglycotton purple pants, one of Tony’s MIT hoodies that he pulled out of a laundry hamper that morning and sprayed with Febreeze and is nestled under four extra large bath towels. His face ends up mashed against Bruce’s hip, all half shut eyes and pleased smile. A few months ago Bruce would have pushed away, gotten up and left mid film, but now even thoughfully piercing Steve eyes aren’t enough to make him care.

 The first time they arranged a movie night, all squeezed into a helicopter hyped up on adrenaline, they had made rules without thinking. They let JARVIS pick the films and Bruce is pretty sure he just reads the heart rates of everyone in the room and picks based on the person who’s had the most stressful day.  Movies nights are officially designated sweatpants, t-shirt, alumni hoodie, quilt, no talking shop and all things SHIELD banned nights.  It’s genuinely awkward when they get back, adrenaline now faded into the dull need to sit on a couch and eat pizza, and Clint announces he has nothing to wear that night.  Tony doesn’t believe him but 15 minutes and not much rummaging thought Clint’s sparse wardrobe reveals it to be true.  Clint owns nothing that isn’t SHIELD issue.  It’s a sobering thought, and that night as Bruce pulled on his Harvard hoodie and grabbed the quilt his grandmother made when he was born he feels guilty.

Until he walks into the living room to see a bright red Steve, a hysterically laughing Natasha and a naked Clint.  There are, thankfully, tactfully placed cushions.  It’s so typical Clint that pretty soon all of them are laughing.  When the pizza arrives they make him collect it at the door and after the first box is done he and Tony make some sort of weird cardboard loin clothe. No one really remembers what film they watched on the first film night, but everyone remembers that Clint doesn’t give a fuck that everything he owns is SHIELD issue and he doesn’t have a college hoodie.

It turns into a game after that.  Of course it turns into a game.  Clint shows up dressed in a tiger onesy, he shows up wearing Thor’s uniform, he shows up wearing the Russian flag and a bear skin hat.  He tries showing up wearing one of Coulson’s suits, but is turned away at the door for wearing what is unanimously agreed is a SHIELD uniform.

He does, after a bit of cautious cajoling by Natasha and Steve, go out and buy some things. Jeans, t-shirts, a couple of belts, some boots stolen from the SHIELD stores and even a housecoat.  He buys a lamp shaped like a sitting bull terrier because it makes him laugh.  He ends up with a pile of Clive Cussler novels stacked up next to his bed because Dirk Pitt is awesome.  He gets a coffee maker with a timer for his bedroom so he can have a cup before getting out of bed.  Bruce knows all this because Clint walks into his lab wearing the housecoat, because sometimes he makes an extra cup of coffee and crawls out into the window ledge and taps on Bruce’s window and because he can’t resist telling him what happened in the latest book.  Clint seems happy.

But Bruce finds him one night in the kitchen, hands shaking slightly, and when he asks what’s wrong Clint just tells him it’s an anniversary and he doesn’t want to talk about it.  He taps on Bruce’s window that night and crawls into bed next to him, curled with his back pressed to Bruce’s.  He doesn’t speak, doesn’t cry and in the morning he’s gone. He spends the next day in his room but the day after that is the memorable night he shows up in his The Amazing Hawkeye, World’s Greatest Marksmen, costume.  He’s all smiles and laughs but they all know this is him reclaiming something, attaching new meaning to the clothes he’s wearing.  He never wears the whole costume again, but he wears the ugly purple pants often as an unspoken acknowledgement of where he’s come from.

Tonight they’re ostensibly watching  _The Fast and the Furious,_ but as Clint pushes into Bruce’s hip Bruce knows everyone has shifted their attention to them.

“You comfy down there, Asshole? Got enough room on the couch?” Bruce asks.  Clint snickers and pushes further into his hip, dislodging one of the towels in the process. It takes a minute, but Bruce manages to extract the quilt from behind his back and deposit it on Clint. “You are unbelievable, Barton.”

Clint’s hand snakes up to steal a handful of popcorn from the bowl on Bruce’s lap, the focus of the room shifts back to the peanut gallery commentary on the film and Bruce is grateful.  Grateful for friends who don’t push to define what’s going on between the two of them and grateful for his grandmother for making the quilt big enough to cover a fully-grown man. But mostly grateful that in the end, as ever, Clint was just himself and went  _fuck it._


End file.
